Friday, May 27, 2016

One common refrain we
hear ad nauseum on our Instagram page is this: “I don’t tell you what to do. Don’t tell me what to do, you &^%*
vegan. I don’t understand why you can’t just shut up about being vegan all the
time.” It’s usually a lot more expletive-laden than that and for my
purposes in writing this, I will ignore the fact that they showed up on our
Instagram page to whine about us not leaving them alone, which is kind of
strange but whatever.

This same sentiment seems
to also be at the root of a couple of recent YouTube videos that went viral as
well – I won’t link to them – which is basically, “Could you vegans puh-lease shut up about being vegan?!” Now, keep
in mind that a good 95% of the time Vegan Street is accused of “pushing our
agenda” down someone’s throat, we are simply sharing the facts without
personalizing it but the question remains: if it is true that vegans talk so
much about being vegan, why is this? Beyond the obvious intention to share
knowledge that might help to influence people in a positive way, why do we just
have to be so damn vegan-vegan-vegan
about things? Maybe I can offer some insight.

We are haunted by what
we know and what we have seen.

I can tell that you’re
already rolling your eyes. This is not meant to be melodramatic or
guilt-tripping: it is simply the truth. It can be challenging to put yourself
in a the headspace of a vegan if you are not one yourself, but if you want to
understand why we sometimes behave in ways that seem puzzling or even obnoxious
to you, it is essential to understand that many of us are vegan in the first
place because we empathize with those who society tells us don’t matter. We
empathize but we must still live in a culture where we are surrounded by clear
signs of disconnection, from advertising campaigns to freezer cases, shoe
stores to meals with friends, evidence that is both brutal and coolly ordinary,
reinforcing that these lives don’t matter, that their bodies are perceived as
objects, that their lives and deaths have happened without the slightest acknowledgement.

As sensitive people know, empathy is both a blessing and a curse: it’s a
blessing to be able to live in alignment with our values but a curse to be
rendered so raw and exposed because of it. Many of us experience something akin
to trauma from knowing what we know and seeing what we’ve seen. For those from abusive
backgrounds, knowing what the animals go through can trigger our own trauma responses.
I mention this not to take attention away from the horrors inflicted on animals
but to simply explain why so many of us behave in ways that seem strange to
those who aren’t vegan.

To understand a vegan mindset better, you might imagine what it might feel like
to know about horrific cruelties being inflicted on innocent lives on an
incomprehensibly massive scale, knowing that it is entirely unnecessary, and
that this is not an abstraction or just a bit of information for you. You feel
it. You carry it around with you. Knowing what you know is something that can cause
a great deal of despair and you will often feel the weight of it in your own
body: you can feel a sense of dread, you can feel like something is pressing
against your chest, you can feel like you want to cry, you can feel grief-stricken,
you can feel very angry, you can feel disconnected, you can feel utterly void
of hope.

Now imagine if what
you know and what you have seen have taken up residency in a crawl space inside
your brain that you didn’t even know that you had. You would be different,
right? Even those who scrupulously avoid graphic videos and images still know what
is happening because that reel continues to play in your internal crawl space. Last,
imagine that you know that by withholding our collective financial support, we
could easily topple the industries that destroy and help create a more just,
compassionate and healthy world. It’s not happening, though, and not only do
people not listen, many make the same comments and jokes that belittle what matters
so very much. These are comments you will hear every day.

This all leads to a big reason, I think, that we are so vegan-vegan-vegan about things: it underpins so much of our
outreach but perhaps it’s a misapprehension on our part. It’s that we take the
adage “When you know better, you do better” to heart. We believe it to be true.
There is an innocence lost when you learn that there are people who, despite
knowing better and having the capacity to do better, choose to remain complicit
in violence and destruction. In other words, they know better but they don’t
necessarily do better. We’ve been led to believe that when people consume
animals, it’s because they don’t know better. The fact is, though, that there
is so much compelling information available today, so much up-to-date knowledge
available and so much more access to being able to choose otherwise today. We
live at a time when it’s never been easier but people consistently choose to
maintain their status quo and support violent systems.

In truth, we are just desperately trying to help you to see and understand what
we see and understand. Can that be annoying? I am sure it can be. There are
worse things, though. If it means anything, it can be just as frustrating to be
a vegan and not understand how people can be exposed to what we have seen and
not be moved to want to change.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Because our love for nutritional yeast and high-speed blenders is not the only
things that sets us apart from society, here are ten emotional states that are distinctly vegan.

1. When you’re in the vegan protein and cheese section of the grocery store and
someone else is also looking and you want to say something because you feel like you
might be in a tribe together but you’re not sure so you just kind of stand
there with a grin on your face that could be interpreted as being friendly or but
it’s most likely, you know, not, so you feel creepy.

2. When you’re standing in the checkout line at the grocery store behind
someone who is putting all these vegan items on the belt and you feel happy and
you’re ready to say something to acknowledge it and invite her to a vegan
potluck and to being your friend on Facebook and godparent to your dog and then she pulls out a carton of eggs and you’re sent spiraling into a crushing,
existential gloom that feels kind of like your heart has been ripped out and
stomped on. Or maybe it’s just me.

3. When you bring a vegan dish to your office party or family gathering and
you’re hovering near it waiting for people to try it and you realize that
you’re being weird so you try to walk away and distract yourself but every time
someone goes near the food you brought, you get all weird again.

4. When you’re reading a list of ingredients on a new food product and it looks
good and you’re getting more and more hopeful and you’re about to take a
picture so you can brag about your discovery on Facebook and then you notice
that the last ingredient listed is butter oil or some such.

5. Whenever a celebrity claims to be vegan.

6. Whenever that celebrity quits being vegan.

7. Whenever you get a notification that your obnoxious paleo cousin has
commented on a vegan link you shared.

8. When the only food you can eat at a party is the food you brought and your
scarcity issues kick in like whoa.

9. When someone says, “You know, ‘vegetarian’ is an Indian word for ‘bad
hunter,’” or something similar to you and you have to walk that tightrope
between being an easygoing vegan or a humorless scold in the public eye.

10. When you are trying to figure out if something on the menu is vegan and
your server keeps trying to point you to gluten-free items.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Back when I was a teenager and beginning to learn the train system in Chicago, I
became familiar with guys who would ride the CTA and try to entice passengers
(*cough*suckers-tourists-and-cocky-teenagers*cough*) to bet against them in
something we all knew as the Shell Game. It went like this: a gregarious guy
walked onto your car and announced that he had a game to play. Under one of three
small cups, a.k.a., shells, he would hide a red ball. He would challenge passengers
to bet against him to see if they could correctly guess where the ball was
hidden after he’d shuffled the cups on his board. He’d make a great show of quickly
moving the cups around on a board and then someone, clearly a plant, would
enthusiastically take him up on the bet. The plant would “guess” correctly and
win money, coaxing others to give it a try themselves, try it again double or
nothing, on and on. The game was rigged so you were conned without even knowing
it. Once you realized that you’d been played, you felt like an idiot but
afterwards, you were wiser for having been suckered. The shell game, the
smoke-and-mirrors and sleight of hand of petty scam artists and swindlers,
comes to my mind as I think about a recent story that has been all over the
media in recent days. Sadly, though, the stakes are much higher than being out
$20 and a bit of your pride. On the bright side, if this story helps us to be more critical thinkers about the media we're receiving, we will all be better off for it.

Bear with me.

I subscribe to Google news alerts on the topic of veganism. One thing that you
notice when you subscribe is that our news cycles can come in waves. I’ve been subscribing for long enough that now I know that popular
stories predictably generate many more copycat stories. In general, the
majority of stories in these alerts are stand alone pieces, like a new vegan restaurant in San Diego or an interview with a vegan cookbook
author in Oklahoma. Sometimes, the stories are interesting enough to inspire me
to want to share them. Most times, I can tell by the headline whether they hold
much interest for me or not. A few times a year, a story will get so much play
in the mainstream press that my Google news alerts are all but dedicated to
that one particular topic for days or even weeks at a time. For example, with
the New York Times recently publishing an article on the wonders of
aquafaba (about time!), I am now seeing another uptick in stories exploring the
astonishing properties of chickpea water. I am here to tell you that we are in
the middle – well, I hope the tail end – of one of those cycles if you hadn’t
noticed already.

Since the story first broke in the mainstream media in late April, my Google
alerts have been full of screeching headlines about a couple who opened a
small chain of vegan (or nearly vegan but for honey) restaurants but are now
eating animals themselves. They are espousing the tired, New Age pabulum that they
are “grateful” for the animals they are raising to kill and consume on their
farm and that eating them is part of the “cycle of life” that woo-inclined
flesh fetishizers often use as a justification for their consumption habits. Their
affirmation-inspired raw restaurants and their Mexican restaurants will keep
the menus their founders developed when they were plant-based, though, so no
meat, eggs or cow’s milk will be added to their recipes, thankfully.

When vegans on social media and the blogosphere, though, started exposing the
pair on their “transition” to eating the flesh of dead cows – which they’d been
foolishly, and, in typical New Age, heads-up-their-asses fashion, blogging
about on their website (sample text: “But we know that while we die a
little bit each day as we open our hearts further to the presence of love, and
as we are the caretakers of our farm animals the responsibility for their health
and well being lies with us,”
and with that, I must do some anti-vomiting affirmations of my own), they were
met with an understandable activist backlash. The vegan community helped to build these restaurants to where they are today and it felt like a betrayal as well as a slap in the face. For a day or two, things
ticked along as par for the course until the narrative shifted and then,
bizarrely, the reporting on the story hinged the focus on the claim that
the pair was receiving death threats from seething, bloodthirsty herbivores. Death
threats in and of themselves are not unusual these days. I’m pretty sure I get
at least a couple silently hurled at me just walking from Point A (when the dog
sniffed menacingly at the neighbor’s rose bushes) to Point B (when I accidentally
stepped in the path of someone doing sprint training). Death threats are a way
of life today, ironically. The reason this claim was so bizarre was that,
despite the headlines, we were offered no example of a single one.

It’s the shell game. It's a bait-and-switch, a sleight of hands. This time, we
were played for clicks.

On platforms as
diverse as TIME to the Hollywood Reporter, The Raw Story to Jezebel, we are
told that, oh, those hypocritical vegans have really revealed their seamy, violent
underbelly now with their scary death threats. The headlines shriek
about the putative death threats from alleged vegans but despite this very
accusatory and charged headline, as I’ve read the actual copy of the stories, I
have not come across a single example of a death threat. Not even a screenshot
with a name blurred out. Not from a supposed vegan, not from anyone. Some of
the media have couched their language more carefully, not surprisingly UKoutlets,
which have more sensibly placed the origin of the accusation with the couple who
have claimed to be receiving said threats, but for the most part, readers are
supposed to accept that these threatening remarks happened simply because the
couple said that they happened, not because proof was offered. The reporting
was shuffled so skillfully, as with the shell game, most people didn’t even notice that they'd been duped. In fact, I read a couple of these stories myself before
I noticed that the assertion was not factually supported in the copy. There was not even one
iota of evidence offered to support the claim of death threats. We’re just supposed
to forget that little detail. This is not to say that vegans would not make
death threats – I am confident that it’s possible – but it is to say that we
did not see a shred of evidence of this despite the claim in the incendiary
headlines.

I am not so naïve that I don’t understand the objectives behind click-bait or
yellow journalism but when sensational allegations are presented as fact, they
should be backed up with at least something
approaching evidence, lest the journalists and media outlets rightfully be
written off as peddlers of “truthiness.” Truthiness, a neologism coined by
satirist Stephen Colbert, is “the quality of seeming or being felt
to be true, even if not necessarily true.” Among the consequences of journalists and media platforms absolving
themselves of the need to maintain a commitment to factual integrity and
instead being content to uphold the much lower bar of truthiness is that for
many people reading their fabrications, a screeching headline is implication enough
and they are off to the races. Now vegans, already a marginalized and often misrepresented
population, can add “makes death threats” to the list of headline-driven,
factually-deficient media strikes against us, alongside “hates humanity,” “on a
risky diet,” and “orthorexic.”

With an accusation as serious as threatening
someone’s life levied against vegans as a whole, shouldn’t journalists be
expected to offer even a modicum of
proof? Apparently not. The shrill headline has done its job and now the news
outlets are licking their chops as the content drives a wave of all-powerful
clicks and they can pretend to shake their heads at our apparent bloodlust. Meanwhile,
the couple in question have redirected the entire conversation with the media’s active support: they got their restaurants loads of free press, they got
sympathetic tsks from the viewing
public, they got to be embraced by spectators who are reassured by lapsed
vegans, and they got to play the victim even after admitting that animals are
now being “harvested” (seriously, what “former vegans” would use this deceitful term
with a straight face???) for their meals. Everyone wins except the vegans and
especially not the animals that people "lovingly harvest."

The ripple effect of lazy,
manipulative, click-driven journalism threatens our democracy and our ability
to interpret and understand real-life events. At its worst, it confirms
prejudices, maintains a malignant status quo and is corrosive to critical
thinking and analysis; it teaches media consumers, which is all of us who are aren’t
living in a cave, to passively and often unknowingly accept this lower bar of truthiness.
There is so much to lose when our media are content to aim for the lowest
possible standards. As people who consume media, we must absolutely hold their
feet to the fire of responsibility when a claim has been made for the sake of a
clickable story and we’ve been sold a bill of goods.

Opt out of this
elaborate shell game. Call out the sleight of hand when you see it. Insist on
responsible media, not truthiness. Vegan death threats? Unless backed up with actual evidence,
it only makes for a great speed metal band name.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Can folk stars also be rock stars? Well, in
the case of rising vegan folk singer-songwriter, Robinlee Garber, I would have
to say, yes, yes, they can be. Full disclosure: Robinlee and I work together on
Chicago VeganMania, where she runs our very sweet and original little
lounge-type space, the Culture Café. At our Culture Café, Robinlee curates and
emcees a day’s worth of great acoustic musical talent and maintains a chill,
welcoming vibe as a respite for some to the wild vegan bacchanal that rages
on in the main room. She does a sublime job of keeping everyone’s spirits up
and making all feel comfortable.

When not showcasing other acts, Robinlee has
been busy making a name for herself in the Chicago folk music scene and now the
national stage with the release of her first solo album, Resilience. With a
honeyed, clear and expressive voice, Robinlee’s collection limns the space we
negotiate when we move beyond our comfort zones and challenge ourselves to
embrace (or simply experience) the unknown. Songs are reminiscent in the best way
to the 1970s California folk scene (think Jackson Brown and Joni Mitchell) with
some torch and jazz elements that add warmth and complexity; slide guitars,
cellos and banjos are subtle but evocative complements to Robinlee’s assured vocals.
This is an album to listen to when you need a little boost, when the boss has
got you down or when you need the company of an understanding friend but you’re
by yourself. Currently #18 on the National Folk DJ Chart, it’s a joy to see
this hard-working, compassionate and lovely musical artist getting the
recognition she deserves. Sometimes vegan folk heroes can also be rock stars.

1. First of all, we’d love to hear your
“vegan evolution” story. How did you start out? Did you have any early influences or experiences as a young person that in
retrospect helped to pave your path?

In 1972 when President Nixon declared a
"war on cancer" my mom announced that we were going to finish all the
meat that was left in the freezer, and then we were "done" with
eating meat. Both my parents lost a parent when they were just teenagers to
heart disease (my grandfather at 39-years-old had a heart attack, and my
grandmother died of bone cancer at 41). I was very much aware at young age that
meat was not a healthy food choice, and I was scared of getting cancer, even as
a 5-year-old kid. Also, I loved animals, and the idea of killing one for food
made me very sad. At about the age of 11, I was calling myself a vegetarian.
Also, when I was little I can remember being at a department store and in the
coat section literally petting all the fur coats. My dad came up from behind me
and whispered in my ear something like "that fur coat your petting came from
a really beautiful animal." That made me really, really upset after that
experience.

2. Imagine that you are pre-vegan again: how could someone have talked
to you and what could they have said or shown you that could have been the most
effective way to have a positive influence on you moving toward veganism?

For me it was a combination of learning how
to prepare good food, and also learning how cruel the dairy industry was. I had
no problem giving up meat, but I was addicted to cheese and loved products made
with eggs. Once I discovered how to make the foods I love using just plant-based
ingredients, I was totally set to switch to a more compassionate way
eating.

3. What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate your
message as a vegan? For example, humor, passion, images, etc.?

I love to have vegan food at my shows and
perform at venues that offer good vegan items on the menu. When I go to music
conferences I will bring my own food with me and share it with other musicians.
I've written some vegan-themed songs as well, and occasionally I'll play them
at shows where I think people would be open to the message. Food and humor work
the best in my opinion. One night I was having dinner with two friends who were
each eating some kind of BBQ dish. When the food arrived I took one look at
their plates and said to them seriously, "You'll be happy to know that I
know CPR in case your dinner tries to exact revenge and kill you with a heart
attack."

4. What do you think are the biggest strengths of the vegan movement?

I think the movement has many, many
strengths! I know so many smart, talented, and passionate people who are great
at talking about all the benefits and the importance of being vegan. There's so
much information out there now in the areas of health, the environment,
and animal welfare. And of course, the food tastes great.

5. What do you think are our biggest hindrances to getting the word out
effectively?

Vegans need to stop picking on each other. I
believe that everyone is doing the best they can at any given time. Being vegan
in an omnivore world is hard enough. We need to cut each other some slack and
stop comparing who is more vegan.

6. All of us need a “why vegan” elevator pitch. We’d love to hear yours.

Eating a plant-based diet will improve your
health, heal the planet, and save the animals from a lifetime of unnecessary
cruelty and death.

7. Who are the people and what are the books, films, websites and
organizations that have had the greatest influence on your veganism and your continuing
evolution?

I have been lucky to be surrounded by so many
vegans in Chicago! I'm a huge fan of Vegan Street and I love being one of the
core members of Chicago VeganMania. For books I always recommend that people
read The China Study. I love the
movie Forks Over Knives, and I'm
super excited about a new movie called Food Choices by Michal Siewierski. I'm also a big fan of the website ProtectiveDiet.com
and have been following that program for over two years.

8. Burn-out is so common among vegans: what do you do to unwind,
recharge and inspire yourself?

Watch movies like Forks Over Knives and other documentaries. I love to cook, be
outside in nature, and of course hang out with other vegans! Being part of the
core group for Chicago VeganMania is also energizing and inspiring. We have so
many great people working on the festival.

9. What is the issue nearest and dearest to your heart that you would
like others to know more about?

Only one? I'm a big fan of supporting local
adoption shelters for homeless animals and also pet rescues groups. If someone
is looking for a specific breed of a dog, persuade them not to go to a breeder
or a pet store, please!! Also, if you can't have a permanent animal companion
of your own for whatever the reason, volunteering at a shelter, fostering
animals temporarily, and assisting in animal rescues and transfers is a great
way to help the cause (and get some furry adoration in return).

10. Please finish this sentence: “To me, being vegan is...”

…Striving to attain a higher level of
consciousness toward other sentient beings and the planet. It's also totally
badass to live on and enjoy eating just fruits, vegetables, and whole
grains.